Abstract

There is a question over whether or not Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations (1776), contended that the rich devise structures of authority (especially civil government) to protect their wealth. At issue is whether significant, private wealth can exist prior to forms of authority. Smith seems to me not to have thought so. It is true that he asserts that, "antecedent to any civil institutions", superiority of fortune can "give some men superiority over the greater part of their brethren" (p.670). However, I argue that there is strong reason not to take the word "antecedent" here in a temporal sense. In numerous and important examples Smith depicts the relationship between wealth and authority as non-empirical (or at least not simply empirical). This connection flows naturally from Smith's epoch-making redefinition of wealth as the productive capacity which a society can command within its given social and political framework. Appreciating this point leads one to see Smith as developing an early form of historical materialism.